The advantage that Trump plays with is that he is managing to channel the social animus of a people who feel like they have lost with the change in the international status of their country.
After the revolutions that swept Europe in 1848, many proposals from liberal and democratic forces made their way despite the resistance of the remains of the feudal aristocracies. One of the most radical innovations was the appearance in countries like France of universal suffrage – although only reserved for men over 21 years of age – which for the first time would give the working classes a voice in elections. The leaders of the democratic and socialist forces had deep hopes in the possibility that the popular classes, who until then had been excluded from all political decisions, could push towards what was known as “social progress.”
The result in France was a resounding failure. In the spring the socialists won less than 10% of the seats, and in December the presidential candidate of the reactionary forces, Louis Bonaparte, received 75% of the vote. The ink had not yet dried on the Communist Manifesto, in which it was stated that Europe was haunted by the specter of communism, when Marx himself, reflecting on that defeat, complained bitterly that universal suffrage seemed to have conveyed that “everything “what exists deserves to perish.” The philosopher and anarchist Proudhon was more explicit and denounced that “the people spoke like a drunk.”
That episode was a great setback for socialist aspirations. However, as capitalism developed and the number of industrial workers increased, faith was also recovered that the majorities would end up speaking in favor of socialism. It was a matter of time – claimed the socialist theorists of the late 19th century – before the majority of the population was objectively interested in the proposals for the socialization of the means of production. However, things ended up being much more complicated and, as time went by, it became clear that the popular classes, especially the poorest and least educated, did not automatically join the ranks of socialism.
The recent victory of Donald Trump is a new invitation to reflect on these issues, because of what the candidate represents and because of the composition on which his electoral support is based – with greater weight than ever among the poorest and least educated. The phenomenon is of great magnitude: the more than 75 million votes he received a week ago – more than half of the total – are 10 million more than eight years ago when he was elected president for the first time. This is an extraordinarily high popular support, and, therefore, there is every reason to worry about a billionaire whose ideology is defined by the most extreme conceptions of mercantilism, nationalism, neoliberalism and classism.
In these weeks when the slogan ‘only the people save the people’ has become fashionable again, it is advisable to keep all this in mind so that we do not grant, prematurely and naively, visions to the ‘demos’ that do not correspond with reality. From any point of view, the ‘demos’ is sometimes right and sometimes wrong, but it is always advisable to investigate the reasons for these behaviors.
Donald Trump, for example, has been said to have benefited from the ‘woke’ positions defended by progressive sectors. This argument is basically reactionary because what they mean by ‘woke’ is policies in favor of gender equality, respect for the human rights of immigrants and concerns about social inequality. If the ‘demos’ turns out to be contrary to these positions, the challenge for the left should be to resolve how to act to change these attitudes of the ‘demos’. The position according to which the left must resemble the people is absurd: if the people are mostly racist it makes no sense to resemble them. Furthermore, there is nothing morally superior about wanting to influence – and change – the behavior of the ‘demos’; It’s just politics.
In fact, it is Republican politics. The republican tradition, historically crossed by this debate, and caught between the ancient and liberal positions of “fear of the people” – from Aristotle to Hayek – and the authoritarian position of “speaking for the people” – of the Stalinist left – always opted for education and what we could call “the cultural battle.” The ‘people’ is still the historical condensation of the political-cultural struggles of the past, not an ahistorical category that embodies any truth.
The election of a reactionary assembly in 1848 in France, elected by universal male suffrage, continued the irony of the abolition of said right in 1849. Hence Marx’s comment. Things continued as a drama when in 1851 Louis Bonaparte proclaimed himself Emperor – now Napoleon III – and reinstated universal suffrage for his own benefit, using it as a tool to legitimize his authoritarian positions; a kind of democratic dictator.
It is certain that Trump is a threat to American representative democracy, something he already demonstrated with his responsibility in the assault on the United States Capitol in January 2021. The narrative that he and his team have constructed is based on the idea that Practically anything goes to save the nation from the threats that would be posing over it – poor immigration, above all. But I fear that the problem, however, is much deeper and goes beyond the person who is embodying these reactionary ideas.
The historian Luciano Canfora has a magnificent book dedicated to Julius Caesar that is provocatively titled, ‘Julius Caesar, a democratic dictator’. In it, Canfora remembers that Caesar’s assassination was not enough to stop the reforms he had undertaken and that, as soon as it was possible for his allies, they continued after his death. The subsequent murder of Cicero, one of the main representatives of classical republicanism and promoter of the assassination, symbolizes that moment of impotence in the face of the dictator with great popular support. In these historical moments, the political leader becomes much more than a person: he becomes a political project in which certain concerns with strong social roots crystallize.
The advantage that Trump plays with is that he is managing to channel the social animus from a people who feel like they have lost with the change in the international status of their country. Throughout the 20th century, the United States has held military and economic hegemony in the world, which has provided it with a series of advantages that have been naturalized by its population – as if they had been there for eternity. And now, in a global context full of threats such as climate and economic threats, and both manifesting together in the rise in prices of food and other goods, social frustration and the popular desire to preserve a certain status also manifests itself in the form of racism. , classism and ultranationalism.
It is in this context where people proliferate willing to believe all kinds of explanations, no matter how absurd they may seem to the best informed people, including the most surreal conspiracies. To this we must add the evident interest of certain powers in disseminating such explanations and channeling the growing anger and frustration. Trump, like other far-right leaders, speaks to a frustrated people and promises them a proposal that matches their previous beliefs, usually not very sophisticated – and thanks to this he incorporates them into a trajectory in which democracy can become a hindrance -especially to the accumulation of capital-. After all, there are ‘demos’ who might prefer to save cheap gasoline than democracy.
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